Cellular communication networks generally suffer from co-channel interference. That is to say, simultaneous transmissions using the same physical resources may generate mutual interference. Co-channel interference in turn reduces quality of received signals, which may be measured as Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR), and therefore limits capacity.
In 3GPP LTE (3GPP: Third Generation Partnership Project, LTE: Long Term Evolution), it has been proposed to use a technique cooperation between cells, which is referred to as Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission and Reception (CoMP), for enhancing the SINR of a user equipment (UE) suffering from co-channel interference. Known strategies of using CoMP in DL signal communication are implemented at the access node in the communication network. One known strategy is to use coordinated scheduling. In coordinated scheduling, cooperating cells schedule their associated UEs in such a way that co-channel interference is avoided or reduced. However, as the used capacity of the cells increases, there is less freedom to accomplish coordinated scheduling. Another known strategy is to use joint transmission. In joint transmission, cooperating cells jointly send the same data to a UE. However, joint transmission may require significant bandwidth for exchanging the transmitted data between the cooperating cells.
Accordingly, there is a need for techniques that allow for efficient interference mitigation in DL signal communication.